Luanda, Aprli 17, 2025 (Lusa) - Former Angolan opposition leader Isaías Samakuva of the UNITA party said on Thursday that the country Angola is experiencing no more than a "military peace" and lacks social peace, arguing that "social tensions" due to hunger and poverty mean that tranquillity is not guaranteed. "We only have a military peace, because although the guns have fallen silent, we still have tensions within society, tensions that don't allow for the tranquillity that citizens should have," said Samakuva. Speaking on the sidelines of a conference he chaired in Luanda, the UNITA politician lamented the widespread hunger and poverty in Angola, which he said "are worsening daily within families," and stressed that the country lacks social peace. "We have tensions between different groups, between different parties and different areas of our country, and what we lack is social peace, we continue to have many problems, the citizen continues to suffer too much," he lamented. On 4 April, Angola marked the 23rd anniversary of peace and national reconciliation, achieved with the end of the armed conflict in 2002. It is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its independence from Portugal on 11 November. The 23 years of peace, Samakuva said, have had all but no impact on the lives of citizens; he called for deep reflection on the country's five decades of an independence that he recalled was achieved "with great sacrifice" by Angola's people. "Independence is a good that we won with a lot of sacrifice and what we hoped it would bring us, which is ease and prosperity and well-being, we don't have, so we have to reflect deeply," he emphasised. Sakamuva, who led UNITA, Angola's main opposition party, between 2003 and 2019, and who now president of the Jonas Savimbi Foundation, insisted that the country needs social peace: "We have people who don't have breakfast, others don't even know what to eat tomorrow. We need to change the picture." He also lamented that the country had not achieved "effective reconciliation" between Angolans, who today "are still judged according to party colour" - of the governing MPLA or of the opposition parties. "We need to look at each other as brothers, we still look at each other on the basis of party colour," he said. The theme of Samakuva's address at the Instituto Superior Politécnico do Bita, in Luanda, was 'The role of universities in the process of preserving peace and national reconciliation'. In it, he argued that true peace requires social justice, dialogue, inclusion, respect for human rights and "is not limited to the laying down of arms" and that reconciliation means respect for historical memory, forgiveness and combating social inequalities. Universities, he noted, are instruments of social transformation that should not only prepare citizens for the labour market, but also for the common good. Finally, he listed the shortage of human resources, inequalities in access to higher education, the lack of funding for research and scientific investigation and the fragility of the autonomy of institutions as some of the structural and functional challenges facing universities in Angola. Samakuva went so far as to challenge the academic community to openly address the challenges of peace and reconciliation in the country, in respectful and straightforward debates, to deepen the country's historical journey towards the consolidation of peace. DAS/ARO // ARO. Lusa